[CTC] Trump: No decision on NAFTA pullout before Mexican election in July

[Arthur Stamoulis]

Trump: No decision on NAFTA pullout before Mexican election in July

POLITICO, By Doug Palmer 
01/11/2018 05:36 PM EDT

President Donald Trump on Thursday indicated he would wait at least until after the Mexican presidential election July 1 before deciding whether to withdraw from NAFTA.

He also expressed hope that a final deal on revamping the 24-year-old agreement could effectively make good on his promise that Mexico would pay for a border wall.

"I understand that a lot of things are hard to negotiate prior to an election," Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal <http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=00a8d5d4d1046f6251deb91fb6b333497fd03fa6614668f5759d2e72d64bcb051d9aa34f13827173f01587146d6aa117>. "They have an election coming up fairly shortly. I understand that makes it a little bit difficult for them."

Trump repeated his threat to terminate the agreement unless the U.S., Mexico and Canada can agree on a fair deal, or a "Trump deal," as he called it, according to the Journal's report. But he said he would be "leaving it a little bit flexible" until after Mexico's presidential election.

The three countries are striving to reach an agreement on a revised pact by the end of March, but Mexico and Canada have balked at U.S. proposals on revamping the pact's auto trade rules and government procurement provisions. They also oppose the U.S. concept of including a "sunset review" mechanism that would automatically terminate the agreement after five years unless countries agree to extend it.

Trump's comment that he will give Mexico time to get past its presidential election in July seems to suggest that the negotiation won't be concluded by the March deadline, and that talks could continue in some form as the Mexican presidential election shifts into high gear. 

Mexican officials have repeatedly rejected any suggestion that they would pay for a wall along the border with the U.S. But in the interview with the Journal, Trump appeared to try to finesse that issue by saying the revamped agreement would be so good for the U.S. that Mexico would effectively be paying for the wall to be built. 

"They can pay for it indirectly through NAFTA," Mr. Trump said. "We make a good deal on NAFTA, and, say, I'm going to take a small percentage of that money and it's going toward the wall. Guess what? Mexico's paying."


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20180112/1c73d15e/attachment.html>